Page 114 of The City of Stardust

Ever Everly steps on to the dais, his eyes shining gold. The sunrise flares at his back like wings, and for a second, there are not one, but two astrals. And the sword gleams in his hands with a confidence borne from centuries of handling weaponry. Violet’s breath catches. In the light, he really does look like a hero.

“We will go together,” he says.

CHAPTER

Fifty-Five

WHAT ELSE ISa curse but this?

Love, stretched and warped beyond all meaning.

Astriade and Ever Everly stand opposite each other. No longer quite a star, and no longer quite a mortal man. Yet there is still the cord between them, bound up in desire and hatred and the wasteland of an entire city.

What a poisoned chalice they have tasted. What regrets. What innumerate sorrows.

Ever Everly hands over the bridal sword that was once a wedding gift to Astriade. She takes it, weighing the blade. It is obvious, even at first touch, the amount of skill and care that has gone into it. And the tales it could sing of, if it could sing at all.

“Ever Everly,” she says, tasting his name for the first time in over a millennia.

“Astriade, daughter of Nemetor,” he replies.

With one tentative hand, he reaches out to touch the side of her face. They have changed so much, and yet this is so achingly familiar, a movement that has already happened a thousand times and more. Astriade closes her eyes, her free hand closing over his. For a second, they are husband and wife, man and woman. Nothing to separate them but skin.

Then their hands fall. Astriade readjusts the sword in her grip.

“Our contract still stands,” she says. “A year and a day has passed, and blood is owed.”

A soul, weighed against a year and a day of love, knowledge, greed. Would it have ever been enough?

Astriade levels the sword at his chest. “We claim our debt.”

With unerring precision, she stabs him between the fourth and fifth ribs. Bones crack; a groan that is a scream bitten back. Ever clutches his chest with one hand, fingers curling around the blade. Bright blood wells up, proving once and for all that he may have abandoned his mortality, but he is still a man.

Capable of so many great and terrible things.

The wraiths gather around him, clutching at him with their ghostly fingers.

With sudden ferocity, he yanks the hilt of the blade towards him, jerking Astriade forward. He grips the back of her head with one hand. The hilt hits his breastbone, but still he doesn’t let go.

“We will walk together,” he hisses.

He raises his arm. A dagger flashes onyx in the light.

Divine justice.

With one last, rattling breath, he drives it into her heart.

Pain. Mortal blood. Hands stained red, not gold.

It should be gold. It should be the gold of sunlight, the gold of gossamer rings around a planet. The gold of an imploding star.

Zvezda, Estrella, Astra, Stella, Nyeredzi—

Identities stripped from her like so much armour.

Penelope.

She hasn’t felt so much as a single mote of sunlight or crackle of frost, but now she feels it all. Agony scorches her skin, and above all, a terror beyond anything she’s ever known. She is many things, but she is not supposed to be mortal.

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